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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813012">a game of pretend</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay'>princesskay</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mindhunter (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Internal Conflict, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:57:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,664</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813012</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in his life, someone sees him. Not just his face and his body, but him - his thoughts and his dreams. And Holden thinks it wouldn’t be so terrible - as traumatizing as he’d always assumed it would be - for Bill to see the rest of him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Holden Ford/Bill Tench</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a game of pretend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Posting from my lakeside vacation airbnb to bring you this ramble that I got inspired to write after I started reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. I read 4 chapters and realized I just wanted to write about b/h lol I can't stay away from them even for a week!! Hope you enjoy ❤</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Holden learned early on that life was like a game. A game of pretend. A game of balance. A game of hide and seek. Decide carefully what to show to others, or risk being exposed for what he really was - as something he didn't want to be, didn't want to be thought of as. It wasn’t a game for everyone, and certainly not one that a lot of people played effectively. Some people didn’t have to hide, or put on a staged play of personality and vivacity for people to like them. Some people never learned, damning themselves to a life of isolation and ostracization. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As an only child and the child of an overprotective mother, Holden didn’t think he had ever nailed the navigation of social interaction with ease. He liked playing alone. He liked the crafted stories inside of his mind that took him places far beyond a shared game of hide-and-seek with his peers could ever take him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t until he went into middle school that the fact that he didn't fit in with the other boys at school began to bother him. No matter how hard he attempted to relate to their interests or share in their jokes, he just didn't. In fact, he was uncomfortable around them. While other boys laughed and joked in the locker room after gym class, he couldn't think of anything but getting out of there as quickly as possible. Other boys had bruised shins and scraped knees from football. He had pressed clothes, a book in his hand, his eyes on the ground. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He might have been the prime target for a bully like some of the other awkward, ugly ducklings in his class, but Holden learned an integral facet of the game of life before any of those other nobodies. You don’t give those assholes anything. Not even a glance. No sign of frustration or annoyance when the lunch tray is flipped out of your hands and onto the ground. No reaction when they throw spitballs at you in class. Blend in. Disappear. By the time high school came around, no one took an interest in him. Just how he liked it. He was a ghost in the halls between homeroom bells, invisible, another face in the crowd. No one cheered when he got high grades - better than most of his classmates. They were all too interested in which girl they wanted to get with or what the football match up was that weekend. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As he got older, the game became easier. Comfortable even. He was aware that he was the weird one, but it didn't bother him. He could handle what people thought of him if it was only a miniscule fraction of the truth. It was that last part - the girls - that he thought he had failed at the hardest when it came to the acceptance game. He was no good with women. He wasn’t as uncomfortable around them as he was around boys his own age, but he wasn’t chick-savvy either. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Going into college, the idea that he was very far behind everyone else when it came to understanding how to date frightened him more than anything else. How was he supposed to blend in with the populace of modern, middle-class Americana if he couldn’t find a good wife to come home to in the evenings after work? Marriage was a part of the game. Nobody respects a guy who can’t get a girl. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the end, he was more focused on his classes than anything else. He was the nobody again. Outsider. Peering through the window from the yard at the lights inside while everyone else socializes and has fun. Drinking games. Strip poker. Sexual tension. Bedroom games. Natural conclusions that he had no idea how to traverse. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Things changed at Quantico. He was too busy during his days in Detroit as a brick agent to think about dating - the SAC out there worked them all harder than the drill sergeants had worked the deserters they were after - and by the time he got into hostage negotiation, successful dating had fallen well below his radar. He was starting to think he would be alone forever. And a part of him was fine with that - because if he was alone, he didn’t have to admit to anyone else what his true personhood behind the facade was; he didn’t have to be seen or exposed, and he certainly didn’t have to see anyone else in return. That vulnerability frightened him. Nakedness. Touching. A mouth kissing him in places he’d never let anyone caress. He could settle into this aloneness. He could have his work, his goals, his successes. He was fine with it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He thought. He thought he was fine with it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill hit him like a wave up out of the ocean hitting a person who had never seen the sea before. Well, the sunlight looks different over the water. The sky stretches on for miles. There’s no land in sight. Nothing familiar to hide behind or latch onto. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden threw up his persona as quickly as he could. FBI agent just trying to do his best, fighting for justice, trying to succeed, just wanting to be a good teacher. Bill saw right through it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They call you a blue-flamer … </span>
  </em>
  <span>It hadn’t bothered Holden when Debbie called him a Mormon, and it hadn’t bothered him when Shepard called him a backroom boy. It bothered him when Bill called him a blue-flamer because it was mostly the truth. A fraction of his real personality - a fissure in the game. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It bothered him even more when Bill said: </span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re a mixed bag. Some experience, a whole lot of horseshit. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nothing about Bill is exactly warm, but there’s parts of him that are like fire. Holden thinks if he steps too close, he’ll be burned. And he’s more uncomfortable than he’s ever been around another man - mostly because Bill’s shoulders are broad and masculine, his hands are precise despite their heaviness, his eyes are captivating blue, and his mouth is deft around his cigarette. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>God. His mouth. And his damn cigarettes. Holden tells himself daily to look away. Stop looking at his mouth. Stop looking. Stop looking. But he can’t stop fucking looking. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill doesn’t make it easy on him either. For all of Holden’s posturing, his pretending, his game-playing, Bill does see him. He sees Holden’s efforts, his ideas. He sticks his neck out with Shepard, and despite his grumbling, he eventually accepts Holden’s ideas about interviewing Kemper and those like him. For the first time in his life, someone sees him. Not just his face and his body, but him - his thoughts and his dreams. And Holden thinks it wouldn’t be so terrible - as traumatizing as he’d always assumed it would be - for Bill to see the rest of him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re in a hotel room deep in Tennessee when Holden realizes Bill might feel the same way. The open window brings in the rich scent of the woods and the buzz of cicadas. Holden is brushing his teeth at the sink when Bill shuffles in behind him to grab his own toothbrush. His hand touches Holden’s lower back very quickly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jolting forward against the lip of the sink, Holden struggles to hide just how electric that touch felt against his skin barely cushioned by his t-shirt. He slides a glance to the side as Bill puts toothpaste on the brush and sticks it in his mouth. It feels very domestic, homely. Weirdly normal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you really not like my company?” The question comes out of him on accident. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill spits into the sink, and casts him an amused frown. “What?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A few weeks ago in Altoona. I asked if you didn’t like my company, and you said we could have connecting doors.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Holden, it was a joke.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden quickly rinses toothpaste out of his mouth, and pats his lips dry with the towel, eager to be out of the bathroom. A humiliated flush is already rising on his cheeks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why are you asking me that?” Bill asks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden leans against the doorframe with his back to Bill for a moment before turning back to him. “No reason. I just- … I don’t mind </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>company. That’s all.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill pauses with the toothbrush hanging out of the corner of his mouth. It’s not very sexy, but in this moment, Holden wants to kiss him more than anything. He wants to look back at Bill every morning like this, and kiss him without the impulse feeling bad and gross. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Finally, Bill rinses his mouth, and straightens from the sink. He takes a shuffled step closer, forcing Holden to lean back against the doorframe to avoid the possibility of their bodies touching. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How long do you think we can keep doing this for?” Bill asks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden stares up at him into his pale blue eyes. His eyes are like both ice and fire. His eyes that are stripping Holden slowly down to the bone. He shivers, all at once sick and exhilarated. Are they playing another game? One he didn’t get the rulebook for? One he was never taught about? Or just one that he’d assumed was only played between men and women. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then Bill’s eyes soften, and he gives a faint chuckle. “If you keep hogging the bathroom like this, then I don’t think we can for very much longer.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” Holden breathes out, his racing thoughts coming to a screeching halt. Bill is teasing him again. “Sorry. I’ll try to be faster.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill waves him out of the bathroom so that he can use the toilet, and Holden goes to lay on his bed with both hands clasped over his face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>From that night forward, he tries to convince himself that he doesn’t want Bill. Not like that. As a partner, absolutely. As a friend, yes. Lover? No. God, he can’t even stand that word. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lover. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It’s the kind of word idiots who read romance novels use. But it doesn’t matter because the game is a broken - or at least, his facade is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gets dragged through the thick of it - through Vacaville, Bill hating him for messing things up with OPR and having a panic attack in California, for having to come pick him up, for being weak and stupid. Through Atlanta, the trenches of his failing marriage, through city politics set firmly against them, through the dark loneliness of trying to stop a child killer all on his own. It felt like all on his own. And all on his own doesn’t feel good anymore. And he isn’t fine with it. And he can’t live with it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s been two years since road school and the birth of his longing when Bill invites him over for dinner and drinks one night. The house is empty, and that feels strange. He visited here with Debbie a long time ago when he was still trying to be straight. Nancy and Brian were here then, and Bill had been convinced that he was straight. But all of that is gone, disappeared into a hundred nights before this one. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill drinks two glasses of whiskey after dinner. Holden sits beside him on the couch, nursing a beer. He can hardly drink with the knot in his belly. He’d barely made it through dinner. Bill kept looking at him from beneath hooded eyes, the color on his cheeks a bit too high, the cotton of his shirt too tight across his broad chest, the slouch of his elbows on the table too forward and determined. Now they’re sitting side-by-side, and he wants to run from the room crying: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t do this to me. Please, you’re hurting me. This hurts. This hurts too fucking much. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turns to Bill as the panic circles his head. “It’s getting late. I should go …”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill checks his watch. “It’s only eight.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know, but-” Holden says, beginning to stand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill catches him by the wrist. Fingers taut against his pulse. Palm wrapped around the back of his hand all warm and secure. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No.” Bill says sharply, then immediately tempers his tone with an apologetic gaze. “Can you just- … stay? A little longer?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden sinks back down against the couch. Bill doesn’t let go of his wrist. They’re both looking at the connection like it’s a beautiful painting, a captivating perspective of intertwined fingers that no one has ever imagined before. But they’re the artist, and Holden’s colors are melding into Bill’s. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s leaning closer before he can stop himself, and Bill’s hand comes up in the same motion. It captures Holden’s cheek, fingers soft and palm calloused. He draws Holden’s forehead against his own so that they’re breathing against one another, tasting the fragile fragments of the other’s dwindling terror. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Bill-” Holden chokes out, beginning to squirm. He thinks he should get away. Get away fast before they both do something they’ll regret. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Bill pulls him in firmly like a harpooned fish. He can’t escape the embrace as Bill’s mouth lands on his own, all hot and slick and bracing. His mouth tastes like whiskey, ashy smoke, mostly just desperation. He kisses hard, in a way that could be construed as angry, but that Holden understands is just urgent. </span>
  <em>
    <span>If I don’t do this now, I never will. I have to make it count. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Count it does. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden’s mouth opens, and with it comes a groan. One moment, he’s panicked and scrambling, the next he’s melting in Bill’s chest, eating up the taste of Bill’s mouth and tongue. The raw burn of teeth and stubble makes his lips and chin sing. He likes the way it stings. The way it melts him open, lays him out, drugs him into compliance. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Every fortress he’d ever built his life and humanity upon crumbles. Every presupposition, every fake, fearful facade explodes. His body crumbles right along with his resisting mind. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Bill draws back, stroking his cheek and breathing in shaky gasps, his eyes are misty like a chilly morning sky after rain. They don’t cut Holden open the way they usually do, and he can’t tell if that’s because he isn’t resisting the exposure anymore or if Bill’s eyes have actually changed beneath the pressure of shifting atmospheres. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He lets out a hoarse laugh. “I’ve wanted to do that for years.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden blinks, trying to speak. The previous version of him - the one before this night - would have had a retort at the ready. It would have been carefully crafted, delicately placed somewhere between detachment and defiance, but all of his shelters are gone. He’s bare, naked, burning beneath the sun, his shields and skin peeling back to reveal a soft, young underbelly that had never learned to love. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Haven’t you?” Bill asks, after a moment, nervous. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden swallows hard, hesitation lingering, but he’s already nodding his head. His body and heart knows what he wants before his mind does. His mind is still trailing behind, trying to play a game in which the rules have never been updated. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes.” He whispers. “Do it again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bill does. Kisses him again on the mouth. On his cheek, his throat. He pushes Holden back against the cushions and kisses his face, the fragile sheen of his eyelids where tears are gathering. Kisses Holden so long and so hard that he can’t remember what it feels like to breathe without tasting Bill’s raspy inhales and exhales against his lips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And this is not a game. His body is screaming as the structured pieces scatter, and his stomach is soaring as his safety cushions disappear. There’s no rules here, just touching and touching back, just feeling a loving caress on his skin in places he’s never allowed anyone to touch and realizing it doesn’t hurt at all. Pulling back, trying to breathe while looking into the eyes of a lover. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His lover. The word doesn’t feel so terrible after all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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